2008 Accomplishments

This comprehensive list of accomplishments supplements the 2008 Highlights found in the 2008 VPIT Annual Report

Data Center

  • Shared University Grid at Rice (SUG@R) installed in the Primary Data Center
  • Completed numerous Blue ARC and Hitachi Installations
  • Mudd Data Center renovated
  • Network Operating Center completed at primary data center
  • Staffed Primary Data Center during Hurricane IKE during crisis and recovery

Network

  • Completed new building networks for Autry Court, Rice Children's Campus, Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, South Plant, and Brochstein Pavilion
  • Implemented external campus firewall architecture
  • Router maintenance performed
  • Completed of deployment of the new campus network
  • Ciscoworks went into production

Middleware

  • Upgraded Mailman hardware/software
  • Campus DR system at SMU.
  • Monitored IT services continuity during Hurricane Ike (power went out but email did not)
  • Installed and later upgraded Confluence
  • Upgraded webmail and mail front-ends hardware/software
  • Deployed the campus guest process

Telecommunications

  • Completed voicemail upgrade and deployed the unified messaging feature of voicemail to email
  • Installed over 25 TIE cables to campus buildings to support integration of voice and data cabling
  • Provided support services (installation and programming) for every major campus building project
  • Coordinated the re-routing and installation of over 28,761 feet of fiber/copper cable across campus (5.44 Miles)
  • Re-negotiated vendor contracts, maintenance and information calling services,  to the savings of $53,000 annually.
  • Uptime for the campus telephone system was 100%

Academic and Research Computing (South team)

  • Deployed Wireless configuration tool (ID Engines)
  • Completed End User desktop migrations to Rice Net 2
  • Ticket count rose 8% while median resolution times dropped 39%
  • PodCast process developed to publish IT PSA (Public Service Announcements)

Academic and Research Computing (North team)

  • Closed over 6700 tickets
    • Response times to ALL tickets improved from 67% within 4
      hours to 77% and from 47% to 63% within 1 hour (urgent or not).
    • The median response time to any ticket in Natural Sciences
      and Engineering was .6 hours and the median time to close a
      ticket was 26 hours.
  • Upgraded/installed 15 departmental servers and virtualized 14 other
    servers.
  • New campus network installations 100% Completed
  • Migrated two departments off their email servers to central mail with others in progress.

Help Desk

  • Help Desk repair shop disinfected and reloaded about 600 student laptops
  • Resolved 4,746 tickets at the Help Desk, 678 tickets at the colleges, and escalated about 20,000 more tickets to other IT teams after preliminary processing
  • Help Desk staff and students answered 11,262 phone calls
  • Reorganized the outreach effort for incoming freshmen
  • Offered 12 different topics each semester through our training program including both office applications and mobility issues.
  • Edited over 1000 pages of documentation in the wiki

Educational Technologies

  • Expanded program for Audience Response Systems, including faculty round tables for product testing and feedback
  • Extensive webpage renovations included: OWL-Space uptime statistics (over 99.5% of time up, averaging over 2,800 sessions per day, and 326,040,967 Kbytes worth of documents transferred during summer and spring of 2008, and teaching with technology video reports featuring faculty and students)
  • Renovated six classrooms and built four new ones
  • Launched e-CAT(educational Collaborative in the Arts and Technology) Project
  • FIPSE collaboration with University of Missouri and Yale to test and bring to production Context Awareness Notification Software
  • Supported of low-tech conferencing to join Mexican and Rice students in the study of languages
  • Supported multi-site teaching between Rice and Schlumberger, Paris, Tokyo, Abu-dhabi; and Rice-Pittsburgh-Tulsa
  • Supported remote teaching research between Rice and Colorado University
  • Replaced all new Macs in classrooms

Research Computing Support Group

  • Served as co-PI and supported $500K National Science Foundation's (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Award. Co-wrote successful grant proposal for high performance computing hardware to arrive in 2009 and will triple the current CPU throughput.
  • Uptime for Ada & SUG@R systems was 99.98%
  • Four members of the Research Computing Support Group achieved "RedHat Certified Engineer" certification and two went on to receive the "RedHat Certified Datacenter Specialists" designation
  • Shared University Grid at Rice (SUG@R) installed doubling the campus' throughput
  • Drafted the SUG@R Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) - Creates a business model that allows campus researchers to easily integrate dedicated resources into the campus infrastructure.
  • Set-up Rice's Inaugural HPC Annual User's Forum and offered a workshop to train users on how to use the RCSG's resources
  • Participated in Broader Engagement program in Supercomputing08 by mentoring students
  • Launched HPC outreach program to Texas-based Universities to facilitate the development of local Texas university's computational research programs by sharing information
  • Migrated campus from RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL4) to RHEL5

IT Administration and Finance

  • Completed migration to new Telecommunications IT billing system with electronic delivery of invoices to begin in January 2009
  • Re-structured IT budget to create centralized pool of funding for IT infrastructure purchases for the campus
  • Developed billing matrix for IT services
  • Conducted financial close-out of two major projects on campus: primary data center and new network
  • Developed audit process for purchasing cards and travel envelopes

Procurement

  • SPSS Campus Site License negotiated
  • Streamlined software media distribution
  • In cooperation with Central Procurement, negotiated contracts for IT suppliers
  • Developed relationships with vendors to include favorable terms and pricing
  • Implemented processes for the IT Primary Workstation Refresh and Disposal Programs
  • Participated on the Rice E-Procurement Steering Committee
  • Initiated the IT Asset Management Committee to select a department solution to track assets.

Enterprise Applications

  • Installed OnBase, campus solution for document imaging and work flow processes
  • Inquisite Campus Survey Tool deployed
  • Upgraded Oracle database 10G  for campus systems
  • Implemented software upgrades for FIS
  • Developed the electronic campus space survey for FE&P
  • Deployment the electronic FBR process for FE&P
  • Upgraded SQL Server database for the campus events management system
  • Revised FE&P's work request and outage notification system
  • Migrated FE&P's user and department files to storage
  • Upgraded FE&P's desktop systems

Marketing and Communications

  • Collecting customer feedback in Conversations with IT
  • Chartered program to provide intern experience and recruit potential future IT employees with VPIT Internships
  • Collaborated with departments across campus to automate matriculation process
  • Coordinated the improved process and planning of future efficiencies of account deletions
  • Prepared Disaster Recovery & Crisis Communications binders prior to hurricane season, distributed to all directors, ITSO and data centers
  • Increased Security Awareness with multiple campaigns to various target audiences
  • Collaborated with residential college O-week coordinators and SCCs for an introduction to IT during orientation that more seamlessly meshed with each college's individual O-week theme

Web Services

  • Released Owlmanac Online (Public Affairs)
  • Upgraded and virtualized department site web servers (All Clients)
  • Improved for DNS Management (IT)
  • Launched 30 Sites with new Rice branding in new content management system including Rice Calendar (Different Departments)
  • Updated a dozen student club sites in new "Instant Portal" service with Rice Branding (Student Groups)

IT Security and Disaster Recovery

  • Installed Endace Applied Watch Intrusion Detection System (IDS)
  • Expanded service auditing to all IT-maintained systems
  • Based on Edouard and Ike, we revised and adapted our disaster and continuity planning preparation and post-event plans